Put Yourself In the Job BEFORE You Get Hired

Posts tagged: Thank You Letters

Sometimes I just don’t understand what candidates do or don’t do. This is frustrating because so many times I’ve heard from candidates, “I already know that.” The problem is that candidates think they know it, but in reality either don’t know it or just don’t do it.

Let’s take the example of resumes. Not necessarily my favorite topic, but one that is important. I often review resumes for candidates and I do this strictly from a recruiter’s perspective. Most of the resumes I review are for senior-level executives, many with graduate degrees. I am so often amazed that these senior-level executives expect to be hired, especially in this economy, when they can’t even put together a resume without errors. Why in the world would a CEO or president expect them to put together a board presentation? The CEO or president would be completely embarrassed.

The following are some common mistakes that I see on a fairly regular basis. I know you don’t need to read these, because these would never happen to you, so consider reading them for all of the other people that need help.

1) Spelling errors. I’m not referring to the obvious ones that a spell checker picks up. I mean the ones a spell checker doesn’t pick up and require proofreading by someone else. Words such as grow not grown, its or it’s, to or too, you’re instead of your, using the instead of that, using and instead of or, and finally, a lot is two words.

2) Grammar, punctuation or formatting errors. Common problems are overuse of commas, no periods at the end of sentences, capitalizing some words and not others, capitalizing too many words, inconsistent format, phrases that just end, mixing plural verbs with a singular subject, and punctuation marks should go inside quotes and outside parentheses.

3) Incorrect use of words. Neither and nor, either and or, accept and except, lose and loose, a and an, are some mistakes I commonly find.

As a recruiter, I would be embarrassed to present these resumes to a client. What does this say about the executive if they can’t put together a resume without common errors? Don’t they have these proofed? What kind of presentation would they make, what would their reports look like, and how many errors would be in a white paper? One has to ask themselves these questions when reviewing a resume with these types of errors.

I am by no means an English major, and I sure have made many mistakes writing articles. I know this because people seem to get pleasure out of pointing out my mistakes. I have learned a lot from these comments. However, a blog article is not a resume. There is a big difference in the two. If I were submitting this article to Fortune or the WSJ, I would pay to have it professionally edited. Like it or not, a resume has to be perfect. That is the standard. I didn’t set the standard, I just live by it and you should too.

Please help yourself. Take the time to have others proof your resume. Invest in a professional to edit it. Don’t DOUBLE check your resume, TRIPLE check it, and then check it one more time just to be sure.

Remember the golden rule, when in doubt check it out. Here is an excellent site to use to check http://www.grammarbook.com/english_rules.asp

Since all of the people reading this article never make these mistakes, one has to wonder (not wander) why I wrote the article.

One final point, these same principles apply to cover and thank you letters.

I hope this helps all of those other people that make these mistakes.

I welcome your thoughts and comments, even those that will surely point out errors in this article.

If this was helpful to you, please help others by posting it to your LinkedIn groups, Facebook page or Twitter.

To download the free chapter on Conducting an Effective Phone Interview from our book “This Is NOT The Position I Accepted” CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resources link.

If you would like to know if your job search is fully utilized and you are doing the right things, download our free Job Search Self- Assessment Scorecard. CLICK HERE and then click on the Free Search Resource link.

My experience from speaking with tens of thousands of candidates over the last 30 years as an executive recruiter is that most candidates focus like a laser beam on employment. Finding that next job is all they think about. Not bad, but I have found that those that find a job fastest focus on employability first.

Changing the focus will change your search. When candidates focus on only finding a job, they often lose sight of why they are employable. This focus changes how they interview, where they look, the process for finding a job, and ultimately leads to accepting the wrong job, which results in returning to the job market sooner than expected.

Focusing on employment can also lead to desperation in a job search. Download a FREE copy of the “Circle Of Transition” CLICK HERE. This shows up in the interview as fear, poor body language, lack of energy, incomplete answers or rambling answers. It impacts the job search as candidates try to demonstrate how they can do everything, in every industry, and regardless of whether they are a 10% or 100% fit for the job, they scramble after it. This only dilutes their search, sends them on wild goose chases, increases the many highs and lows of a search, and in the end gets the candidate no closer to getting a job.

Instead, what if you changed the focus to employability? This will alter how you view yourself and what you have to offer. It starts the process of realizing you have value, you are good at what you do, the company will be better off because they hired you, your boss will look better to their boss for hiring you, and you know you can and will do a great job.

Employability is about what you bring to the party. It is about focusing on what makes you better than others. What is it about you that this employer can’t live without? Every person they interview will probably have the same skills and experience to do the job, so why should they hire you? It puts you in a position of strength.

Employability will expand your job search, not reduce it. It may eliminate some of the long shots that frustrate many candidates and at the same time it will increase the exposure to positions that have a higher probability of success. I firmly believe one of the main reasons candidates we coach find jobs faster than most is because we work to change their focus to employability and away from employment.

Employability will help you create a job where jobs don’t yet exist. My last article was about finding the true hidden job market before others and recruiters. Employability helps you to not only tap into the hidden job market but it gets employers thinking about why they need you and your unique set of skills and experiences. Employers start to think about how much better they will perform with you on board. They begin to realize the solutions to their issues of growth, expansion, cost reduction, process improvement, etc, isn’t inside company. You become the savior to these problems. Employability turns you into a solution rather than just another candidate applying for a job.

Focusing on employability is much like what a CEO of a public company said to me many years ago. He said, “The focus of many public companies is the stock price and hitting the quarterly numbers. That will never be ours. We focus on building great products, innovation, customer service, and high quality. If we do that, the stock price and quarterly earnings will take care of themselves.”

If you focus on employability, employment will take care of itself.

To help you focus on employability be sure to download our free radio show recordings. They are in our candidate audio library. CLICK HERE to enter the library.

To validate whether or not your job search is effective, we have put together a job search self assessment scorecard. You can’t fix what you don’t know isn’t working. This free download will help you identify weaknesses in your job search. CLICK HERE to download your free copy.

Tired of sending resumes and hearing nothing back? Try this cover letter. It has proven over many years to increase responses from recruiters and companies. Download a sample by CLICKING HERE

There aren’t too many things one can do only 70% effectively and be successful. Can you imagine doing your job 70% effectively? Would you hire someone that told you in an interview,” I work great 70% of the time?” Would you keep a person working for you the was only 70% effective?

I certainly hope you answered NO to all these.

So why then do so many candidates think they can find a job or conduct a job search at a 70% effective rate? I think in many cases I’m being generous in the 70%. I have worked with many that struggle to get to 50%. Stunning, but true.

Too many candidates just don’t know how to conduct a truly effective job search. That isn’t to say that they don’t try, as I’m sure they do, but trying in a job search isn’t what you are striving to achieve. You shouldn’t be ashamed of this. It is not your area of expertise. It would be like me doing your job. How effective would I be? Probably less than 50%.

In an economy like this in which companies will receive hundreds of resumes, receive numerous referrals, and will interview until the perfect candidate shows up, one can’t afford to be ineffective or inefficient. This is the time to be at your best, 110% not 70% or less.

Here are some simple examples that might help you to identify how effective your job search is (you can download our 8-Point Job Search Self Assessment for free to assess your search CLICK HERE):

How good is your LinkedIn profile? I have reviewed thousands of profiles and most are incomplete, lacking important data, not optimized for a search, and provide limited information. Yet like it or not, LinkedIn is more powerful than most resume databases.

Many candidates have no idea how to properly network. Most think it is a numbers game. Meet a lot of people, shake a lot of hands, go to a lot of meetings and so on. WRONG. This is just a bunch of activity. Meaningless activity most of the time. How effective has your networking been for providing the right job leads?

Candidates focus on only one type of key word search. The electronic type. They optimize the resume for the automated/electronic resume system that scans the resume to identify certain key words. There are two types of key word searches that must be optimized. In my opinion the second one is more important. I have written an article explaining this. CLICK HERE if you want more information on the second type. I don’t have the space here to include it.

What prompted this article is that I had lunch today with a VP of HR and we were discussing just how poorly so many candidates are at phone interviewing. She brought it up, not me. She asked me if I had the same bad experiences conducting phone interviews as she. Yes, I replied. Way too many candidates treat the phone interview the same way they treat the face-to-face interview. They are completely different and you have to adjust. This is so important that we actually offer this chapter from our job search workbook for free. Not because we have to offer it for free, but the phone interview is the most important interview. So many candidates just take it for granted. CLICK HERE if you want to download it.

“I already know this stuff” syndrome. I get this all the time. You might even say this after reading the phone interviewing chapter. My answer to the comment, “I already know this stuff'” is “So what.” That isn’t important. We all know a lot of things, but we don’t do them and do them well. I know to keep my head still when I hit a golf ball. So what. I know it but doing it isn’t the same. I’m only 50% effective at doing it. I firmly believe this is one of the biggest reasons candidates aren’t as effective as they should be. They think they know it, but don’t do it and do it right.

Working hard and putting in long hours isn’t the answer in a job search. A job search is an endurance race. It is very much like running a marathon so candidates must be efficient or like a marathon you will burn out. I find many candidates are just running in place and get burned out quickly.

The sad part is that there are so many tools and resources available to candidates. Never before in my 30 years have I seen so much excellent information readily available. Experts blogging, articles in newspapers, YouTube videos, and social media groups are all out there for candidates to tap into. Yet so few do, and even fewer actually implement the suggestions effectively.

I encourage all the candidates I represent to actively research. There are great tips and ideas out there and 90% are free. Spending an hour each night will dramatically impact your job search. Reading blogs on resumes, branding, social media, or watching some of the outstanding videos on YouTube can change the direction of your search very quickly.

Our contribution to you are our many free tools and resources. For example our audio library (CLICK HERE) has over 50 great audio recordings from our weekly radio show, the free chapter on phone interviewing (CLICK HERE) and our free LinkedIn Profile assessment (CLICK HERE) are just a few of the tools we offer.

Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Job Search Networking Group for many more free resources. CLICK HERE to join.

I know this is one of the major complaints by candidates. I hear it all the time, “I send them my resume and they don’t reply. Most won’t even return my phone call.” As difficult as it is to say, for the most part these candidates are correct. That doesn’t mean it is right, it just means you are correct.

Similar to most at the manager level and above, when you are working, you are generally overwhelmed with things to do. So you have to prioritize. Some things are high priority and some things go on the low priority list. The low priority items may never get done, or may get done in the next few months. Generally, this depends on what other higher priority items trickle in.

Recruiters are really no different. We have to prioritize our day. Some things are high priority and other things are low priority. If you want to engage recruiters, your job when working with or contacting them should be to move up the priority list. Knowing how I, and many other recruiters prioritize, might help you do this.

Here is how I set priorities regarding the basic duties as a retained recruiter. Contingent recruiters might vary slightly, but when I was a contingent recruiter it wasn’t a whole lot different.

High priority:

Clients always come first. So some might ask, “Who is your client?” The company paying my fee is the client, not the candidate. Therefore, the company has first priority on my time. That means I will return their phone calls before a candidate’s, I will meet with them prior to a candidate, reply to their emails first, and screen resumes they send me first.

Candidates on an active search. These are candidates that I’m actively working with on an existing retained search. They could be at any stage within that search which includes, recruiting ones I have identified, interviewing them, returning their calls or emails, reviewing their resume, meeting them, scheduling interviews, following up after an interview, compensation discussions, reference checking, or basically anything I need to do to move the candidate and the search to the next phase.

Marketing. The next priority for me is marketing. This is meeting with clients and potential clients, attending networking meetings, and making sure I’m out in the market so that when a search comes up I’m the one that gets the call. When that call comes, refer to number 1 above.

Important but not a high priority. These I try to get to by the end of each day. Sometimes they spill over to the next day, but I usually try to complete these within 24 hours.

Returning emails not related to a search from people I know or have worked with in the past. These are generally people updating me on their search, prior clients with a question, a request unrelated to an active search, general emails, and clearing SPAM. Sometimes I don’t get to these until the afternoon. I scan down the “sent from” and subject lines, and when I see someone I know I will read the email and then reply appropriately.

Reply to emails and return calls that are a referral. If someone is referring a person to me, I will always reply. I respect the fact that they have taken the time to do this. I feel I owe the reply out of respect to the referring source.

Return voice mail calls. Basically the same as above. I listen to them and clients get an immediate call. Anything to do with an active search gets a call. Others I evaluate and make a decision on what to do with them. Refer to low priority below for many, not all, of these calls.

Low Priority:

Return emails from those I don’t know. This is one of those low priorities that tick many candidates off. The good news is that you have a much higher chance of getting a return email than a phone call. I often try to catch up on these on the weekend or at night. Because of the large volume of these, I’m often two weeks behind.

If you are just sending me an unsolicited resume, I may or may not reply to you. Generally not. I may take a look at the resume to see if it fits an active search. Probably less than 50% of the time I reply. This is why I preach, tweet, and blog, DON’T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON A RESUME SERVICE THAT WILL SEND YOUR RESUME TO 1,200 RECRUITERS.Save your money as most recruiters don’t even look at them. I doubt more than 5% of retained recruiters do.

If the email is just to introduce yourself to me with no referral, I will probably just delete it. What else can I say? Like me or hate me, that is what will happen. (If it makes you feel better, then “yes” I spend hours late at night reading the hundreds of unsolicited resumes I receive on a weekly basis).

Lowest priority. So low that I have to be bored and/or very lonely to take action. I’m desperate to just talk to someone and my wife and kids are all busy. I have probably already called every person in my contact list, any tech support that I can possibly think of, and if it’s the only way to get out of having to watch Driving Miss Daisy or The English Patient, I will claim I have to return these phone calls.

These are the voice mails that simply say, “Hi Brad, this is (fill in the blank) please call me at (fill in the number. I probably don’t even recognize the area code).” or “Hi Brad, this is (fill in the blank) I just want to introduce myself to you. Please call me at (fill in the blank).” I will apologize now to all of those I have offended. Sorry, if I didn’t return your call. It is just that I don’t have the time, and I rarely can help you. I know each call is going to take 5–10 minutes, and in the end, I can’t do anything for you. I used to make a list of these calls. When time permitted, I would work my way down the list but over time the list just got too big. For every 3 calls I returned, I added 5 or 6. I stopped adding to the list when it exceeded 100 calls to return. Sorry, but this many calls to return just isn’t possible. Heck, it is hard enough to reply to that many emails.

It isn’t personal, and please don’t take it personally, when recruiters don’t get back to you. Most recruiters are not trying to be rude, but as I said in the first paragraph, we only have so many hours, just like everyone else, and we have to manage our time too.

My guess is that most managers, when working, don’t have time to return calls from all of the sales people that call. My guess is that you also don’t return unsolicited calls you receive at home.

My hope with this article is two-fold:

The most important of all is to save you money by discouraging you from using a resume blasting service. They are easy to find and often may even call you. When they do call you, do me and yourself a favor, DON’T RETURN THEIR PHONE CALL.

Give you a path to getting to recruiters. Knowing the path of least resistance should help you. If you can’t get in the highest priority group, you may be able to move into the important but not high priority group. All this takes is some time and getting a referral. Most candidates are capable of getting a referral given all the networking tools available.

You can download for free many tools and resources from our Web site. For example, you can download a sample thank you letter. CLICK HERE to download.

If your search is stalled, you can download an 8-Point Job Search Assessment Scorecard. Use this to identify the areas in your job search that may be causing you to be stalled. CLICK HERE to download.

Finally, if you are a member of LinkedIn, you should join our Job Search Networking Group. Over 4,400 people have. It provides an extensive amount of resources and articles for you to take advantage of. CLICK HERE to join.

After the storm of controversy I created with the article, “How Recruiters Read Resumes In 10 Seconds or Less” (Click here if you haven’t read it), I thought it would be appropriate to follow up with what candidates, that pass the 10 second screen, can do to get a call from a recruiter.

Whether you like recruiters or hate them, they are a necessary part of the equation in a job search. Some will fight the system, while others will embrace it. My only goal is to help educate candidates that want to understand how recruiters work. I do this to help candidates, not hinder them. I believe the more information you have about how we work the better it is for you. Together we can then help each other.

Recently I calculated approximately how many resumes I have reviewed in 30 years as an executive recruiter. It is close to, and probably exceeds, 1 million. That is a whole lot of resumes. That number scared me. After 30 years of doing anything, one should get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

So before you send me a nasty comment, I’m going to take the position that I’m as good at what I do after 30 years, as you are at what you do after 20 years.

By doing the following and including these few things on your resume, I believe you can dramatically increase your response rate.

1) NEVER use a functional resume. PERIOD. Before you come up with reasons to justify it, the key word in the sentence is NEVER. I have never, ever met a recruiter that reads them. In addition, I very rarely have talked to a hiring manager, CEO or HR person that reads them. Why fight this battle? Even if 10% read them, that means 90% don’t. Which side of that equation do you want to be on? Considering that 100% read chronological resumes, you don’t want to fight this one. Join the 100% club and use a chronological resume.

2) The format is not as important as the content in the resume. My experience with speaking with candidates is that they spend a lot of time on the format; what should go on top, where should I put the education, do I need an objective, how long should the summary be, etc. Spend more time making sure the content communicates to the reader what they think is important. I have yet to meet anyone, who told me, “I sure like all of their experience. They are really qualified, but they put their education in the wrong spot on their resume, so they are out.” The article, “Resumes Are About Substance Over Form” gives a lot of good information on this topic. CLICK HERE to read it.

3) Help us help you. All recruiters need to know certain things to make a decision to call you. The very basics include:

a) Some information on the companies you have worked for such as, size, number of locations, industry and products. This can be done in one sentence or less. Just the name of an unknown company is worthless when screening. You want to stand out from the rest.

b) If you are in management, a little about your organization such as, number of people you manage, are any of them managers, titles, and are they all in the same location.

c) If you are in sales, who are your customers? If not by name, at least what industries you call on, are you selling B2B or B2C, product description, territory size, and average size of the sale. I am constantly amazed that most sales people exclude this information. As a salesperson what you are selling is pretty darn important for the reader to know.

d) For technical people, what technologies are you working with? What language are you programming? If in engineering, is it a highly custom engineered part, are you working on a system or a component, are you designing nuts and bolts or toys? Seems important to me.

d) Include quantifiable results in the accomplishments. If you don’t, these are meaningless and most other resumes will read the same as yours.

The first comment I get from candidates when I suggest these things is, “My resume will be too long.” No, it won’t. I have prepared thousands of resumes and I can get all of this on two pages. In fact, in our book, “This Is NOT The Position I Accepted” (CLICK HERE to review) there is an example of a two page resume that contains all of this information. The person has over 20 years experience, so it is very doable.

Getting in the “A” pile is your responsibility, not the reader’s.

I wish more candidates would help us help them. All you have to do is give us the information we need to call you.

Contrary to what you may think, recruiters want to fill the position just as badly as you want the position.

After an interview, sending a “Thank You” letter is common etiquette and a nice thing to do, but saying “thank you” should not be the main reason for sending it. Most candidates send one after interviewing with a company, but as a recruiter, I rarely receive one. I personally don’t need one, but on the occasions when I have received one, I think the candidate misses a great opportunity by just saying, “Thank you for the interview.”

I believe a good “Thank You” letter should be used to reinforce your ability to do the job and/or address any potential issues that came up during the interview. It can be another marketing document. It is important not to over do it, but a tactful letter, that does some subtle marketing can have a big impact on the person reading it.

For example, a few years ago a candidate called me after an interview and said, “I think I blew the interview.” The CEO asked me, ‘What my career plan is for taking this position?’ I answered how over the next few years I would impact my department and how that would impact the company. The CEO responded, “That is fine, but we really want people that want to grow and maybe some day have my job.” The candidate asked me what would be the best way to recover from this or if there was a way to recover. The answer was the, “Thank You” letter.

A carefully worded, “Thank You” letter explained to the CEO that the candidate interpreted the question as asking for the short term impact he would have once on board. He went on to explain, in the “Thank You” letter, that certainly in the long-term his desire was definitely to advance, but he realized that was dependent upon him doing an exceptional job in the role he was being hired to fill, hence the reason for answering the question as he did.

The candidate had the opportunity to address a miscommunication during the interview, which is a common problem with interviews. Ultimately, the candidate did get the job. Would he have gotten it anyway? Hard to tell. One thing is certain, the candidate didn’t think he would have.

Some other basic issues regarding a “Thank You” letter:

One page maximum

Send shortly after the interview

Not an email (with the possible exception of IT professionals)

Addressed to a specific person, not “Dear Interviewer” or salutation left blank

Individualized to the particular interview, personalized to the specific topic

Do not use a generic one-size-fits-all thank you letter

Consider using this as one more chance to market yourself. Don’t over do it. This is not the time for a hard sell. It must be subtle and tactful. It won’t work all the time, but hopefully as in the example, it will work the one time you really need it.

Download a FREE sample Thank You letter along with some Do’s and Don’ts for Thank You letters. CLICK HERE to get yours.

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